Last year, in the top albums recommendation article, I had mentioned a certain Pittsburgh based violinist named Joey Molinaro and his album ‘Say at Last – Who Art Thou?’. After initially coming across Joey through his collaboration with Gridlink, I was quick to get addicted to most of his solo work. The recent release on this solo front is the record ‘I Who Will Forever Evil Yet Do Forever Good’. With a name that is quite a mouthful, this is a record that continues Joey’s chaotic performance that has a very strong avant-garde feel to it. This is the kind of record that reveals something new to you ever time you listen to it and it is this nature of the music that makes this one of my most favorite records I’ve come across this year.

Avant – garde metal, without a doubt is the least definable sub genre of metal. A label mostly used to put a stamp on anything too weird, too different, too experimental to fit in with already established parameters. Its really more of a term, or a genre for the genre-defying. Bands as diverse as Fantomas,Neurosis,Deathspell Omega,Enslaved and even Tool have all been put under this widespread umbrella. Having been a fan of many bands labelled as avant-metal, rarely have I felt a band fitting the description as well as Chaos Echoes does.

Dødheimsgard’s recent release, ‘A Umbra Omega’ is undoubtedly one of the most difficult albums for me to talk about. It’s not that the album is so bad or so good that I cant find words to describe it. Rather, it’s because I do not understand this album completely. Maybe I never will. But that is what Dødheimsgard is known for and they’ve been doing this ever since they came out with 1999’s ‘666 International’. They’ve now released their most complex and weird album to date with this one. This album is so twisted and dumbfounding that even after listening to this for an entire month, I cant wrap my head around it. I still do not know for sure whether I like this album or not.

Is it just me or does the German language sound absolutely weird? No offence to my German speaking friends, but it’s one of the most bizarre languages I’ve come across. I bring this up now because this is one of the prominent thoughts that run through my mind while listening to ‘Kaiserschnitt’ by German weird vendors Porta Nigra. This is an album that plays around with different subgenres all the while carrying an avant-garde flavor and a blackened attitude. Released on Debemur Morti Production, this is a 46 minute trip into weirdness that is only accentuated by the band’s language of choice.

The first time I listened through this album I didn’t know what to think. There’s a lot of stuff going on. All the time. The album is called ‘World Metal. Kosmopolis Sud’, and you won’t hear me disagree.Continue Reading